Let's talk about $2 million vs. $5 million vs. however high it goes. You're still making money, but the pace has slowed since you hit the initial goal. How would you pitch it to people to encourage them to keep donating? What would be different about the movie you can make if the campaign were to end this second, as opposed to if it gets significantly higher over the remaining 29 days?

Rob Thomas: Here's one example: There's going to be a big high school reunion set piece in the middle of the movie. In my perfect version, there is a brawl that takes place there. A brawl is an expensive thing to shoot. That's days of shooting. I shot a fight sequence in season 3 of the show, where Veronica was in a dorm room with the rapist. That sequence was 27 shots. One page took us an entire day of shooting. If the funding were to stop now, I promise you that that high school reunion will be "Terse words are exchanged." It will be an argument between Veronica and others. And that's fine. In some ways, that's the bread and butter of "Veronica Mars." We can make that work. But it would be more fun, it would feel more like a movie than a TV show, if we could have something bigger and cooler than that.

And what was the budget for an episode of the show?

Rob Thomas: It was $1.8 million.

So now that you're at about $2.7 million as we discuss this, what's your dream goal for the campaign?

Rob Thomas: It's one of those questions where I think, 'Only an asshole would answer that question.' But I'll be an asshole anyway! In my mind, I think that at $5 million, I start feeling like that's the tipping point. And I'm not even basing that on what I think the budget of the movie could or should be, but on what my expectations and hopes were for the amount of money we could raise on Kickstarter. We put a bigger dent in that than I could have hoped for in the last two days. We'll certainly spend that money. We'll find cool stuff to do if we go over it.

The nice thing is that we never wanted to be perceived as a charity. We always imagined that we're putting up a Kickstarter page, and we're selling real product at real prices to fans. It's not like a pledge drive where you pledge 100 dollars and get a 4 dollar tote bag, where it's done out of the goodness of your heart, and for charity. We wanted to created packages where people look at what they're getting and think, 'Wow, I got a script and a digital download and a t-shirt for $35. I would pay that!' So all those people worrying that we're aksing for this money to make our movie, we're selling you a product. Think of us as a store, not a charity. And I think it's very above-board, what we're doing here. It's one of my hopes for why I think it can keep going, is that if you look on that website, you think, 'Hey, t-shirt and a movie and a DVD and a script for $50, I'm in.' Hey, I would sign up for the "Deadwood" version of this.

A lot of people are very excited about this, but others have been critical of it. They're asking what business Warner Bros. has asking fans to give them money to make a movie, and saying that Kickstarter was meant for independent projects for people who don't already have means or access.

Rob Thomas: We don't have the means or the access to get the money any other way either. I've tried for a very long time to get "Veronica Mars" made by traditional means. Like those indie filmmakers, I also couldn't get this financed through traditional channels. If I could have, I would have. I certainly tried very hard to do that. Like them, I am searching out an alternative method to getting my movie made. And I think the way to look at it is, all Warner Bros. is doing is pre-selling the product. I realize that people have an emotional reaction to "Veronica Mars," and one I'm grateful for, but we're trying to give good value for the money. We're asking you to pre-buy the products to prove to the studio that there can be money made. If they sold you the t-shirt and download later, they're making profit then. No one cares that they're making profit then. This just ensures the interest level. And I think "Veronica Mars" fans have proved there's enough interest to make this size of a movie viable for them.

For tens of thousands of people who care about this project, you've already sold them a copy of the movie, in one format or another. How much concern is there for you, or for Warner Bros., that by the time the Kickstarter campaign is over, everyone who's interested in seeing the movie will have already paid for a version of it?

Rob Thomas: I think the hope — and I don't want to say there's not concern on that — is that these "Veronica Mars" fans are still going to enjoy, if it's playing in their area, going to the movie theater and watching it with a crowd. Things that I'm a big fan of, I enjoy that experience, and we think that a lot of people, even if they pre-paid for a digital download of the movie, we hope they are still going to want to go to a theater and see it. But more to the point, it's okay if, to a degree, that's the case, and I'm sure it will be to some degree. I hope it's small. The upside and the way I view it — and the way that, to a degree, Warner Bros. views it — is all we've done is sold it to you before we made it. We're okay with that.

Is the entirety of the Kickstarter money going to production and to fulfillment? If the campaign gets high enough, is there a chance any of it would be left over?

Rob Thomas: No. Kickstarter money will not exist beyond the cost of the movie. All of your high-end rewards — the speaking role, naming a character, the private screening in your hometown — were already snapped up. I know you've said you want to add more of those, but how quickly will that happen?

Rob Thomas: I think it's going to happen fairly quickly. There are certain things we want to open up today, or else tomorrow. (NOTE: After we spoke, the campaign announced additional premiere events in New York and Austin, as well as more spots for background extras.) We know we need to get some more higher-end items in there. Although from the beginning, we've structured it with the belief that the bread and butter of the campaign will live and die at the $35 and $50 level. Those are the price points that the bulk of the backers will pledge at. That has proved pretty true, I think. Those other ideas are fun, and they keep people talking, but I don't think that's where the bulk of our money If you did a diagram of where our money is coming from, it's in those $35 and $50 tiers, and the rest are fun. That $10,000 for that speaking role is a drop in the bucket, but it's been fun and there have been so many references to it in the press about the campaign.

Have you read the interview with the guy who bought the speaking role?

Rob Thomas: I did! It's so intriguing that he's not even a big "Veronica Mars" fan, but just a fan of Kickstarter in general.

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

Well I think it's clear that Party Down will be catering the 10 year reunion. Ron Donald has a thing for them.

Ryan Hansen gets to stretch his acting chops playing two roles. Adam Scott will also play two roles. First as Henry but also as the lecherous Mr. Rooks (he and Madison Sinclair hit it off three years ago and are now married).

Well I think it's clear that Party Down will be catering the 10 year reunion. Ron Donald has a thing for them.

Ryan Hansen gets to stretch his acting chops playing two roles. Adam Scott will also play two roles. First as Henry but also as the lecherous Mr. Rooks (he and Madison Sinclair hit it off three years ago and are now married).

Agreed, re: international donors. Honestly, I'm not sure what the issue is; most kickstarters do handle physical rewards for international donors... by adding tiers with slightly higher price-points to take into account the increased shipping.

So, they could basically add new reward tiers that mirror the existing physical reward tiers, (not counting the screenings, etc. where the extra cost would far exceed just a difference in shipping), up the cost by ~$10 for each tier, and clearly mark that those tiers are for international peeps due to shipping costs.

Oh, and I think if they did so, they would very easily add another 1M, just via new international donors and existing donors upping their amounts. The comments section is certainly full of backers who are international and say they would happily increase their kickstarter amounts if they could get the physical rewards.

Rob said in the FAQ that shipping isn't the issue. " We've run into a couple thorny issues. It's not about the shipping cost. If it were that easy, we'd already be doing it." It probably has to do with distribution rights and liabilities.

I remember here in Australia they had a lot of trouble releasing the season 1-3 dvds. We didn't get them until a couple of years ago (well after the show ended). Not sure the reason, but perhaps they are having similar issues now.

My guess is that the issues stem from international releases. The Digital release is being done via Flixster (according to the KS page), which is a US-only service. They'd have to find international equivalents for that when it comes to the film. As for things like shirts, maybe their fulfillment partners don't have international distro agreements or something (kinda weird when you consider it's WB, but still).

In Brazil, Warner still needs to release the second and third series on DVD.They should do an airport scene where non-Americans could appear. Don't know how much it would cost them, but I believe a lot of international fans would donate a lot of money to be part of such a special project. It would be a nice reward, so they just don't need to receive a copy of the movie.

My guess is that Rob Thomas and Warner Brothers underestimated the number of international fans. When they made the agreement to launch the project, they only focused distributing the movie downloads and DVD/Blue Rays in the US.

In order to make this work for international fans, the WB has to find partners to offer movie downloads in each country and they have to make DVDs encoded for different regions. All that takes time and money. I'm guessing there is a chance that the WB might decide not to pursue international options if they think that the cost outweighs the potential profits.

I can't believe a typical ep of Veronica Mars cost $1.8 mil to shoot. If that's typical relative to the production, an ep of Pushing Daisies must have been twice that. PD had insanely high production values for a TV series. Does anyone know the price tag?

Joel: Veronica Mars may have cost more because they spent a lot of time shooting on location (think of all the outdoors scenes, the school, etc.), whereas I think Pushing Daisies was mostly done on a set?

Shooting on location isn't necessarily expensive, depending on how you do it. The X-files and Friday Night Lights are two series that made good use of location shooting on a tight budget, but location shooting in LA would be a lot more expensive.

Pushing Daisies had incredibly elaborate sets, props, costumes, and make-up. And virtually every episode required entirely new sets and costumes to accommodate all the episodic storytelling. Granted, the used a lot of CGI and digital matte painting to complete the effects, but again, that isn't cheap.

For the last decade, big-budget filmmaking has continued to balloon, while the indie has all but ceased to exist. I feel like the death of the indie started with the success of Pulp Fiction and the exploitation of Sundance; as time went on, indies took over the Academy Awards, but all of this meant that indies began having casts of recognizable actors and $30 million budgets. The low-range had become the mid-range, the high-range had become the mega-high range, and the low-range and truly indie all but ceased to exist.

In a world where literature is able to exist on many different level and find its audience without having to be a best-seller to even exist, I've always thought, and hoped, that eventually things could circle back for films. We're certainly at a point where anyone can make a film with the technology available to the average consumer, and the internet has broken down both the walls of education and distribution. But there's still currently the problem of funding.

While everyone is bemoaning this because they think Warners is abusing Kickstarter, and they're afraid that this may become a wave of the future, the fact remains that Kickstarter won't work unless people give the campaigns their money. I hope there aren't so many rich sheep out there that they'll just blindly give their money to every film project. But if it's a film that people want to see, why shouldn't that film get made at a budget appropriate for the audience? All people have to do if pledge money to a Kickstarter for a project that excites them, and vote no with their wallets when something doesn't. End of story.

But I think what's more interesting, once the dust settles, is how this will play out as a solution for the true independent film-maker. I don't think studios will want to waste the time or hassle with this model for films beyond a certain budget. But I think films with a budget targeted and a few million, and even much cheaper, more independent films, could really benefit from the groundwork being laid. This could be an important first step in the continually evolving development model, and a way for the next wave of independent filmmakers to help finance their fledgling projects on a similar (or even smaller) scale.

Indies haven't ceased to exist. It's harder to get indies into the mainstream theaters because distribution has changed, but the audiences that used to frequent these films isn't going to mainstream theaters as much these days anyway. It's actually easier to make and distribute indie films via online channels than it ever has been.

It's true that many of the smaller studios that produced and distributed films in the traditional system have disappeared, and the studios have pulled back on their "art house" production arms. It's also true that the studios aren't making smaller, adult-focused films as much as they used to.

But indie is doing pretty well. It's just not the indie film system we had in the past. The internet and digital film making has changed all of that, and would have changed all of that whether the smaller studios still existed or not.

Congratulations to the Veronica Mars team! If you're listening Bryan Fuller, you should definitely make a Pushing Daisies movie, but please don't forget about Wonderfalls! In fact, make Wonderfalls The Movie first, then go for Pushing Daisies (Push Harder). If they won't let you bring the shows back, make movies. Each episode of those 2 series were like short, perfect movies - sad and bittersweet when it came to the last frame, but always leaving the lingering warm glow of satisfaction. It's awesome to have the dvd sets, but man, I was not done with those characters, stories and fantastic places.

What I started thinking about is a bit smaller than crowdfunding new content. I want some older, less popular TV shows (80s-early 2000s) to be released to DVD. Assuming a perceived lack of purchasers was the issue with certain shows (as opposed to content rights), would something kickstarter-esque be a path to get some older, niche-y shows released? Say I put up $40 and if the project funds, the reward is a copy of the DVDs I want...

(I'm still annoyed they never released the final season of Once & Again.)

Really excellent article! I'm so happy for this fan base. I'm sick of people saying that Warner Bros could make the movie, I wonder if any of those people ask any one who
Pledged if the regret it. The answer would be a resounding NO! To me this is no different then buying a ticket to see a concert, or a play, or a favorite bands album, I'm getting something I want for my money! Thank you Rob and all for this chance to see our beloved characters live again!

As I recall, Pushing Daisies literally ended on a cliffhanger, with Kristin Chenowith's character hanging off of a cliff. They didn't finish their whole season because the writers' strike interfered, and then they weren't renewed.

"Pushing Daisies literally ended on a cliffhanger, with Kristin Chenowith's character hanging off of a cliff."

No, this was episode 10 of season 2, there were a few more episodes after. The actual finalé was a voice-over which Fuller managed to get financed. It gave a small amount of closure to one storyline, but left everything else hanging... like the mystery of Ned's father, the watches, what is Ned's surname, how will he and Chuck find happiness when they can't touch, Emerson and his daughter... all of these were unresolved.

Since the fans are paying for a large chunk of this movie, why not send out a survey and ask them what they want? I personally would like to see Veronica Mars as a young FBI agent...who also goes to her class reunion!

Jason Dohring made another Kickstarter movie, "Searching for Sonny". http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/SearchingForSonny/searching-for-sonny-an-andrew-disney-original (Not a great movie, but I'm sure that the fan support for that particular actor—who had rabid fans—did not go unnoticed.

And KBell's pregnancy—you gotta wonder how that went down. (Sorry, this is prurient speculation.) "Hey, Kristen, looks like we're not going to be able to launch the Kickstarter until the 2013 hiatus." "Dax, honey, let's get cracking. This baby's gotta pop by May!" Then there's a phone call to 'House of Lies'. "Dudes, get ready fire up the CGI machine for my sex scenes, and get those granny panties, stat!"

I'm pretty psyched for the movie. If I'd been at a computer when the NYC premiere rewards were added, I might have gone for it, but instead I opted for the $35 sweet spot. However, I really wish they wouldn't waste budget on Piz and Parker. If this was a $30 million movie, sure, I could live with it, but why polarize the fan base?

Movie studios have the worst reputation in the world for their shady accounting practices. I am glad that Warner Bros seems to actually want to develop this funding model. Otherwise, they would be milking this particular instance for all it's worth.

Still, who gets credited for the investment equity of all the fans' pledges? When I pledged, I was thinking it was Rob Thomas. But the money goes into a Warner Bros account and they handle the distribution of rewards. So my guess they are considering it their money and their investment equity, not Rob's. And this kinda pisses me off. I have no love for the big studios who push everyone around and do their best to stack the deck in their favor, no matter whose rights they step on.

Alan, thank you so much for this interview. It's a combination of fanlove for the show, and interesting speculation about a new business model. I personally cannot wait for the tshirt and digital copy of the movie that my $25 buys me, and I will absolutely go see it in the theater. I'm also hoping they film in Oceanside (the stand-in for Neptune in the series,) because that's where I live!

can someone explain to me how it costs $600,000 to do t-shirts and DVDs. i understand it is for a lot of people but honestly this amount seems really crazy high. get some fans together for watching parties and have them process all the merch, via crowd-sourcing. this seems insane.

It's not too hard to do the math. I don't have the numbers from when they hit 2 million exactly, but we can look at the Kickstarter page today:

- roughly 20000 backers get a t-shirt- 12231 get the t-shirt and DVD- 1031 get the t-shirt, DVD and poster- 4502 get the t-shirt, poster, and a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack- 732 get the above plus all three seasons of the show on DVD- 2214 get the above stuff with signatures, minus the show DVDs- 485 get the above stuff with signatures and the show DVDs- roughly 900 get all the above stuff except the show DVDs and then the more extravagant rewards like personalized voicemails, etc.

I excluded or consolidated levels where people only get digital rewards.

...being shipped to 56320 people. If your average shipping cost per package is $3.00 you've already spent $170,000 without manufacturing a single thing or paying someone to pack it. And that's probably a low estimate even using media mail and bulk shipping rates; it costs nearly that much to ship one DVD, let alone a DVD and t-shirt and whatever else. The manufacturing costs on all these items are obviously a big question mark, but estimating on the very low end at something like 50 cents per DVD, 2.00 per shirt, 2.00 per combo pack, and 4.00 for the show DVDs, you just spent another 140,000. You're now over 400,000 without yet spending a penny to pay the small army of people it will take to ship all this stuff as well as handling a pretty massive digital fulfillment program, not to mention the well-compensated folks who do the DVD and Blu-Ray transfers, program the menus, etc.

Also, I seriously doubt they're going to crowd-source their distribution to approx. 40000 paying customers. If you want to see a Kickstarter campaign give all subsequent campaigns a bad reputation, that's probably a good way to get started.

i think this is the hidden cost of Kickstarter. i think they should have reconsidered the prizes, and made them digital (i.e., PDFs of scripts, streamed or emailed videos) to reduce these costs. these layouts reduce margin too much, are a bad idea.

i am also suspecting that if a company like Warner Bros. is involved -- histories of wonky bookkeeping -- the fulfillment arm is going to be very costly.

i buy merch from bands all the time (call me a chump but i still buy physical product and merch to support music i love) and some are shipping the stuff themselves. some use distribution channels and the costs get CRAZY high. to the point of equalling the cost of the merch.

i am skeptical of all of this in a low budget film model. i understand from what you figured out the numbers are staggering but i still think it could be done cheap and easy.

i don't know i would like to see the money up on the screen, if the budget is going to be this low.

Great interview! I've enjoyed the level of transparency given in this kickstarter. I just wanted to add that as long as it's good, I don't mind so much the "giving people what they want." As long as it's good, let all the bad things happen. (Honestly, I think Logan dying could make for something really interesting. Kind of bummed that it's not a possibility.)